Ha! I didn’t even notice that.

Starlink, Starship, Starliner… who can keep them straight?

/s

Jesus Christ, the astronauts aren’t stranded. The first manned flight of a new vehicle and there were some issues on the part that gets jettisoned and burned up, so they can’t inspect it afterwards. They’re trying to analyze it while they have it, and even with the leak they could be to there a month with no issue.

Boeing deserves the bad press they’re getting on the planes lately, but this is crap.

Because reading a book is about the must sedentary thing there is, and I need to get out of the chair sometimes.

Thanks! And same to you!

I’ve been working at my company for 39 years (I’ve done a lot of different things in that time, so it isn’t stale). I like the work and the people, and it feels important, but it’s getting tough when the alarm clock goes off, and I’m beat when the day is over. I’m getting ready to pull the plug, but I’d be a liar if I said I had no reservations.

That is a bit of a worry. A big issue is that I really like to read. I already read kind of a stupid number of books. I have to not let that escalate too much when I’m not working 40+ hours a week.

Yeah, I thought about it. I’m a manager at my company, and my actual software development skills are pretty antiquated. Could probably do requirements and architecture, but they don’t need me for that (certainly not at my pay level). I can’t be a part time manager. I’m guessing there are a couple things they’ll ask me back for, weird niche experience I have, but those things don’t happen every year.

I’ll probably be fine. I’m don’t get bored very easily. We’re planning to relocate when I retire, so settling in and exploring will soak up a lot of time for a while. Should be fine.

Do you have a game plan for what you’d do? Not rhetorical, I’m curious.

I worked with a guy who I thought would really love retirement. He and his wife traveled a lot, and he had a couple hobbies he was passionate about. I met him for lunch a couple years later, and he was morose and said he regretted retirement. He said he still loved traveling, but it was something they only wanted to do two, maybe three trips a year. He was excited about doing his hobbies more, but doing them all day felt like it was his job and sucked some of the fun out of them. So he ended up sitting on the couch watching TV all day.

Meanwhile, the place we work has way more than a normal cross section of brilliant people, and we do super interesting stuff. He said he loved talking with friends and family, but he desperately missed solving problems with literal rocket scientists.

I’m still going to retire next year, but stories like that give me pause.

I started at the place I’m working at now right out of college, and there was a pension that was intended to provide 85% of your final salary from retirement to the end of your life; I would have had all my retirement points at 55. Then like 15+ years ago, the company was sold and the pension was frozen. Still a great thing, but nothing close to what it was supposed to be.

When I turned 55, I was pretty pissed off about it - I should have been able to retire. Then I realized that I could easily live another 30 years. That’s an awfully long time. Sure, the money would have been nice, but I don’t think I would have wanted to retire then. I’m getting close to it now, and still it seems like a long time potentially.

The one area of technology that SpaceX has really contributed is landing a booster. Oh, and load balancing across such a large number of engines, too. Most of the other stuff is things NASA has been doing for many decades, without nearly the number of failures and exploded hardware.

Their business model is what turned the industry upside down. Putting tens of billions of private money into something is going to do that. But now that Russia isn’t competing for astronaut launches, SpaceX is increasing the launch price. It’s way too early to say they aren’t going to be sucking off that government teat.

Totally willing to admit that I get pissed off seeing people say that SpaceX does things so much better and cheaper and then not compare actual costs. We didn’t know their actual costs because they’re a private company and they don’t have to say, but it’s clearly in the billions.

You can’t say SpaceX does things better and cheaper if you aren’t looking at the whole picture. Yes, SpaceX is largely privately funded, and estimates are that they’re only recently turning a profit, and at that it’s because of billions in Starlink revenue.

Likely a great deal for the government, for sure, of they can get someone else to pay the development costs. But don’t imply that the big primes are to expensive or are too bloated if you aren’t going to compare actual costs.

You’re not arguing in good faith. First of all, that’s what NASA paid, not the total development cost. Way, way more of the costs were paid by investor money. Secondly, falcon 9 is not the nearest equivalent to SLS - that’s starship. There’s a huge, huge difference.

You are not comparing apples to apples though. How much did SpaceX’s cost to develop?

How is it so much better than SLS/Artemis?

That all makes perfect sense, and I think you’re spot on.

There’s another factor I’ve noticed, too. Like I said, I’m a manager. Honestly, when I’m home, I get more done because there’s fewer interruptions. But many of those interruptions are employees popping in to talk to me. Sometimes they just want to say hi or whatever, but not infrequently it starts with “Hey, there’s something I wanted to talk with you about…” and they tell me about some issue or something going on. They could email/message/call me about those things, but often they just don’t.

So I think my job as a manager is more effective when we can talk face to face. I go into the office three days a week.

I have mixed emotions about it. I manage a software engineering team at an aerospace company. I do see some increased quality and productivity when folks who work together and colocated. But there are tradeoffs, and happier employees for sure needs to be in the trade. Our company has sites in different states, and for years and years we’ve grabbed the skills we need from wherever they are. That is, we’ve recognized that it’s workable to have at least some people not colocated, and are willing to take that hit if it buys us something.

We were nearly 100% remote for the better part of two years, and it was fine. Our productivity was at least adequate. My personal feeling is that a hybrid arrangement, where everyone has some overlapping days, is the sweet spot. But I’ve fought for individuals being fully remote when it made sense.

The article says the “or else” was that they’d become ineligible for promotion, and half decided to do it anyway. So they didn’t lose their job.

It’s not at all a surprise that some of the earliest MAGA alarmists were Holocaust survivors

Jesus, is every single Republican lawmaker a complete piece of shit these days? I’ve often felt like the party that is all about tax cuts for the rich and making sure no one gets a handout attracts a disproportionate number of terrible human beings, but once upon a time I felt like a lot of them were decent, wrong-headed people. Now I’m not sure I can name a single Republican who seems like a decent human being. Maybe Liz Chaney is mostly there? So many are like cartoon villains.